Chelsea loanee offers Pochettino rare glimmer of hope

Tom Weber

Updated: 6 Apr 2024 13:03 BST
4 min read

Mauricio Pochettino, Chelsea, 2023/24 — © IMAGO

Andrey Santos is beginning to turn his career around on loan at Strasbourg.

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The Chelsea wonderkid endured an abysmal start to the campaign. Despite impressing in pre-season, Santos was shipped out on loan to Nottingham Forest, while the Blues signed Moises Caicedo for a record €134 million and also Romeo Lavia for a whopping €62m.

At the City Ground, Santos did not play a role at all, only featuring in seven minutes of Premier League football. Then-Forest coach Steve Cooper bluntly admitted that the Brazilian wasn't playing because he was not owned by the relegation battlers and Chelsea unsurprisingly terminated his stint in the winter.

The idea was for Santos to head out on loan again, but his pre-Olympic duties with Brazil meant that he would be away from Europe for the best part of a month, making him an unattractive signing for clubs. The impasse was eventually resolved by loaning him to French sister club Strasbourg on January Deadline Day in a controversial move that prompted outrage from Alsatian fans.

Strasbourg fans are vehemently opposed to the BlueCo ownership of their club and the signing of a young midfielder at a time when head coach Patrick Vieira was asking for experience and reinforcements for wide positions only fuelled the hate from the fans, who were convinced that Racing had sold their soul.

Santos impresses

Despite the anything-but-warm welcome to France, Santos is now beginning to impress for the first time this season. After a promising debut against Lorient and a short cameo versus Stade Brest, the 19-year-old was surprisingly benched for two games running, but he has now started successive fixtures.

The youngster is yet to contribute to a goal, in part due to being a defensive midfielder, but Santos has impressed enough to be nominated for March's Ligue 1 Young Player of the Month award. Strasbourg have won both of the games he started in.

“His ability to be calm when he has the ball at his feet is very important for us. His technical quality allows us to build up better from the back. I thought he was very good this evening,” Vieira said after Strasbourg's 2-0 triumph over Rennes last weekend.

Santos finally living up to his potential is, of course, also good news for Chelsea. The teenager is regarded as one of the biggest talents on the books at Stamford Bridge and some fans may even feel that he could have been useful to have around this season given Lavia's horrendous luck with injuries.